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Planning Space For Vegetables
Plan a successful vegetable garden and fit vegetable plants into its layout by following these steps in order:
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- Define the outer boundaries of your planting area.
- Divide that area into sections, each to be a planting bed.
- Choose the location and spacing of all paths, utilities, and work areas.
- Choose the vegetables you will grow [See: Vegetable Plant Selection Guide].
- Consult the GrownByYou Planting and Harvesting Planner to set times for planting each vegetable [See: Planting and Harvesting Planner by USDA Plant Hardiness Zone].
We’ll help you plan your vegetable gardens using an easy, modular approach. It makes best use of your space and allocates enough room for each vegetable. That way, you’ll plant enough of each vegetable to give you the harvest quantities you want.
From Plan to Result
Step-by-Step Instructions
A small vegetable garden requires only a few sketches with labels to produce great results.
When the scope of the garden is larger, however, take the time and avoid later problems by following these steps. They’re especially valuable if you plan to have others perform the installation work and need to describe your wishes for your garden.
An Easy Way to Start
To help make the process easier at first, try printing and tracing your bed layouts using our grids and bed layout diagrams [See: Grid-Planting Diagrams or Bed Layout Diagrams], before using graph paper to draw a diagram of your own for your unique garden.
Visualizing the result your drawings will produce in your garden’s soil is important. You’ll also find it handy to consult our examples of a simple rectangular bed with three successions of vegetable plants [See: Planting Succession Diagrams].
These methods can be helpful as you set aside space in your garden for the vegetables you’ll grow.
Making a Planting Plan
Drawing a quick planting diagram helps you understand how to fit plants into the blocks you set aside for planting beds when you chose the site and scale of your garden.
Use a grid system [See: Grid Planting Diagrams]. It’s an easy way to visualize your vegetable garden. That’s especially true if you choose to have successions of crops grown in the same spot at different times during the gardening season [See: Planting Vegetable Successions].
Succession plantings allow you to reap harvests from more than one vegetable in a limited amount of space. They will increasing your garden’s yield. Examples of successions include carrots, beets, and peppers; radishes, corn, and winter squash; chard, cantaloupes, and endive; and spinach, green onion, and cucumber.
Try to think of your garden beds as a series of equal squares, each 1 ft. (30 cm) to a side. You can fill either an individual square or several combined squares with a vegetable planting, according to your garden’s size and your needs.
Because most beds are rectangular, the examples on the pages that follow show rectangular and square gardens with plant allocations based on the needs of a single household member.
Circular and triangular plans also are shown. They’ll give you ideas for fitting plants into irregular beds.
If your household has more than one member, or if a vegetable is particularly popular with one or more of you, simply multiply the squares needed to fit your needs.
It’s best to draw a scale diagram of your own garden on graph paper, using a scale of 1/4 in.=1 ft. (6 mm=30 cm). Then, using colored pencils, shade the squares to show your plantings.
Count the number of squares used for each vegetable in the example garden diagrams. Transfer an equal number of squares—or multiples to allow for other family members—to your garden diagram.
Keep an eraser handy, and try to visualize how the garden will look as it grows. Substitute other vegetables by consulting the plant lists given for each grid-planting diagram [See: Grid Planting Diagrams].
Consider Your Site
As you fill in your grid, keep your garden’s site, exposure and climate conditions in mind.
Avoid planting tall vegetables to the sunny side of the garden; it’s best to have the plants increase in height as you move away from the sun.
Areas that receive light from the sun as well as by reflection from a light-colored fence or a structure’s walls are best for warm-season vegetables—examples include eggplants, melons, peppers, and tomatoes. They grow best when they have lots of heat.
If your garden is subject to prevailing wind, plant your tall crops to that side so that they will shield the rest of your plants from it.
Open areas with a few hours of shade will be the right spots for cool-season vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, radish, spinach, and Swiss chard.
Some vegetables need a block planting to pollinate successfully. Corn, for instance, requires enough plants in close proximity to cross-pollinate. The grid planting diagrams for corn allow for this need [See: Grid Planting Diagrams]. Assist pollination by shaking each corn plant as its tassels ripen with pollen.
For other plants, you’ll benefit by dividing the plantings among several areas.
Several plantings will make your garden more attractive, limit the spread between plants of any pest infestations and diseases, and allow you to grow other vegetables after the plantings mature.
Each garden is unique. While the recommendations given are general in nature, it’s best to adapt them to your garden and your needs. Let your growing experience be your guide.
It’s better to allow a bit more space for each vegetable than you need, but keep in mind that too many zucchinis are often produced by a single vine.